After being kept a secret, Lely unveiled its latest Yellow Revolution – the Lely Orbitor – on a test farm in the Netherlands recently.
Situated on the van Roessel family’s organic dairy farm in Udenhout, Noord-Bradant, the Lely Orbitor is a new automatic, on-farm, dairy processing unit – essentially a mini dairy factory that works 24/7.
The on-farm dairy processor is designed to be a “future-proof solution” for farmers to increase their income by adding value to milk, having a short route to the consumer and a choice to market the milk themselves.
How it works
The Lely Orbiter system will get milk directly from two-to-four Lely Astronaut robots and has been designed to handle a low flow of milk.
This enables the system to start processing the milk fast, directly after milking, by cooling it down to 4°. The continuous automated operation ensures a large capacity.
The closed set-up of the system, coupled with the fact that there are very few processing steps and little time between milking and processing, guarantees both milk quality and food safety.
Milk taken from the milking robots is stored in one of the tanks for the selected milk groups or directed to the conventional milk tank. Following this, the milk is heated to 55°. When this temperature is reached, the system can separate, homogenise and pasteurise the milk.
Lely’s processing system also offers different storage tanks for the final products. The number of tanks depend on the amount of different products the farmer wants to produce.
In addition, the system offers and option for automatic bottling, so 24/7 processing means that 24/7 bottling is also possible.
The farmer’s perspective
Dairy farm Cees van Roessel has been farming organically since 1986 and milks a herd of approximately 100 Holstein Friesian cows. The Lely Orbitor has been in operation on his farm for the past eight months.
Feeling that the industry was too focused on bulk production, he looked at alternative methods of marketing the milk produced on the farm.
“We started with this process because we felt we need to differentiate in the market. I was very skeptical at first. Is this it really?
“But over time, I see more and more benefits of it. I taste the milk. The milk is delicious. I have often placed a bottle on the table at friends, then they said: ‘We are tasting milk that we remember from years ago’.
“If you can bring that value and feeling into a product then I think you have made a good step. The milk is traceable and controlled due to the information – such as production date and expiry date, which is on the label.”
He views the system as a way of developing tighter bonds between the farmer and the consumer, adding: “I think if we produce what the consumer wants, then we have found a good relationship with one and other and then this densely-populated country can contribute some great things.”
With the system, the family is able to bottle milk and sell it directly to the consumer. What’s more, they are able to bottle and sell their milk from three individual cow families.
Along with showcasing the Lely Orbitor at the launch, the family also introduced ‘Mijn Milk’. Sourced from cows on the farm, milked by the Lely Astronauts and processed by the Lely Orbitor, the milk will be available across the Netherlands in most Albert Heijn supermarkets as of September 9.
The next step
Alexander van der Lely, CEO of Lely, introduced the concept during the Yellow Revolution event.
He said: “This new Lely Orbiter system will offer farmers a smart way to produce fair, direct and pure dairy products and to increase the value of their milk.
This on-farm dairy processor matches the high-quality standards of large industrial-scale processors. The quality and taste of milk are safeguarded because direct on-farm processing is much faster and offers a shorter route from cow to consumer.
“This innovative system is able to process the milk of small batches of cows separately, offering the farmer flexibility and efficiency. Consumers will be able to trace the produced dairy products back to individual cow family level,” he said.
Although the Lely Orbitor situated in Udenhout is still only in the test phase, the company has targeted North America and China as the main market outlets. However, the UK hasn’t been ruled out and, who knows, it may even make its way to an Irish farm down the line.